Examining the high price of separation of religion and state at work and at
school

http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
DURING a particularly contentious debate during the Constitutional Convention
in 1787, Benjamin Franklin suggested starting the next day's deliberations
with a prayer. But Alexander Hamilton was opposed to the idea. He said that
such a prayer would be a public confession that the otherwise secret
deliberations were deadlocked. The patron saint of American conservatism also
added that he saw no necessity for the convention to seek "foreign aid."

Hamilton would, before his life was cut tragically short by Aaron Burr's
bullet in 1804, become far more respectful of religion. In response to the
atheism that he felt was being promoted by uncritical admirers of the bloody
French Revolution, he would even propose the founding of a "Christian
Constitutional Society." Thus, even within the life of the most conservative
of the republic's founders, there is a body of contradictory evidence as to
the place of religion in American public life.

And it is a debate that has not ceased since then.

Among the latest shots fired in that battle have been those aimed at John
Ashcroft, the attorney general of the United States. Ashcroft became the
favorite whipping boy of liberals during his confirmation hearings because of
his profession of evangelical Christianity and his views on abortion. But he
has found himself in the cross hairs once again for an interesting reason:
holding Bible-study sessions in his office. For some liberals, the most
offensive thing he has done during his brief tenure in office is having the
effrontery to pray on government property.

DAVENING IN THE AG'S OFFICE
Apparently, the attorney general welcomes employees into his office, where
they study verses from the Hebrew and Christian bibles, recite psalms and
offer prayers. The sessions, which began during Ashcroft's time in the U.S.
Senate, include Jews as well as non-Jews. One Orthodox Jewish aide to
Ashcroft who worked for him in the Senate (and now in the Justice Department)
has said that there is no religious coercion and that, in fact, the aide has
been able to offer the study group the insight of Rashi, the medieval
rabbinic commentator.

Though the sessions take place before the work day begins, liberals like
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform
Judaism, are worried about Ashcroft's davening, praying. Saperstein told the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency last month that even "public awareness" of Ashcroft's
Bible-study group will be perceived as a "government endorsement of
religion."

I suspect that the vast majority of Americans, including many liberals, do
not share Saperstein's fears. The idea that a man who exercises the almost
unfettered might of the attorney general's office actually recognizes a
higher power than his own is probably comforting to most of us. The fact that
both the Senate and the House of Representatives have paid chaplains who open
each day's official session with prayer also undercuts the notion that
somehow Ashcroft's devotions are a threat to the separation of religion and
state. And one can only imagine the justified howls of protest that would
come from Jewish groups if a Talmud-study group led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman,
D-Conn., were to be similarly questioned.

But the mini-contretemps over Ashcroft's prayers is just one skirmish in an
ongoing fight over just how public prayer in this country can be. The drive
to ensure that no one prays on public property received another blow last
week when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious groups cannot be denied
access to public facilities that are open to other groups.

In that case, the court ruled that the Good News Club, an evangelical
Christian organization, should be allowed to use a room in an upstate New
York school building on the same basis as other groups that routinely use the
facility for their meetings. The majority ruled 6-3 that to exclude the group
because of the religious nature of the club, while simultaneously allowing
the same privilege to a host of other organizations, was an abridgement of
the freedom of speech.

As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority decision: "The danger that
children would misperceive the endorsement of religion" was no greater "than
they would perceive a hostility towards the religious viewpoint if the club
were excluded from the public forum."

Thomas was right. Religious speech should not be granted protection not
afforded other kinds of speech, nor should it be imposed on children or
anyone else. But neither should religion be discriminated against.

The circumstances of the case, which focused on voluntary attendance at a
club meeting held after regular school hours, clearly showed that the
establishment of religion was not in question. Nor is the Good News Club case
similar to another court ruling last year, which prohibited a scheme in a
Texas district that created a student election to establish a sectarian
prayer to be said before school football games. In that case, the result was
an infringement of the right of minorities to participate in school
activities. The current case offered no such harm to any student.

Opponents of the court decision also see the right granted to the Good News
Club as aiding efforts to shove the majority population's religious beliefs
down the throats of the minority. But there is a real difference between this
case, which involves voluntary groups during nonschool hours, and compulsory
sectarian prayer to start the school day, which the court was right to strike
down decades ago.

We should also remember that all sorts of groups -- from environmentalists to
gay-straight alliances -- are currently allowed after-hours access to many
public schools. As a civil libertarian, I see nothing wrong with this. And I
wonder whether opponents of last week's court decision at the American Civil
Liberties Union, and elsewhere on the left, would allow those groups to be
discriminated against in the same manner as the Good News Club.

Many Jewish parents are worried about their children getting pushed into an
after-school meeting, where they will be influenced by Christian teachings.
But these parents need to be more concerned about their own families than
what goes on at the Good News Club. All parents need to monitor their kids'
after-school activities more closely. Even more importantly, Jewish parents
should make sure that their children are sufficiently educated in their own
heritage so as to render them invulnerable to the siren call of other faiths.

Moreover, do we really think it is good for the country to create a situation
where religious speech is banned in the public square? Too many of us seem to
think that American Jews will only be safe if the more than 90 percent of the
population that is Christian checks their faith and religious values at the
door when it comes to public life. But as even a liberal like Rabbi
Saperstein said last year during the presidential campaign, there would be
nothing wrong with the Christian messiah being the favorite philosopher of
George W. Bush.

So long as coercion or government establishment of religion is absent, prayer
and public discussion of religious values is good for the American body
politic. We may not all share the faith of John Ashcroft or the Good News
Club, but protecting the free exercise of religion is just as sacred a
constitutional task as prohibiting its
establishment.